Spider Solitaire — 1 Suit
One-suit spider solitaire uses eight copies of the thirteen spades — 104 cards, no other suit anywhere. Because every card is a spade, every descending sequence is automatically a movable run, so nothing ever freezes mid-column. Build eight King-to-Ace runs to win. This is the version most players clear more often than not, and the one to learn the shape of the game on.
1 suit. Eight sets of spades. Every descending sequence is automatically a movable run, so the game is about column management rather than suit-matching. The usual first game.
Your statistics · 1 suit
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
Kept in this browser, on this device only. Abandoning a deal in progress counts as a loss, so the win rate means something.
Today’s deal
Everyone playing Spider Solitaire today gets deal #4136628247. It changes at midnight UTC.
Track the month on the daily challenge page.
Replay a deal
Every deal is a pure function of its number, so deal #20260726 is the same shuffle on any device, any time.
Keyboard
- U / Z
- Undo
- R
- Redo
- H
- Hint
- N
- New deal (asks first)
- F
- Full screen
- Space
- Turn the stock
- Esc
- Deselect, or leave full screen
- Deck
- 8 × 13 spades, 104 cards
- Tableau
- 10 columns
- Stock
- 50 cards, 5 deals of 10
- Goal
- 8 complete King-to-Ace runs
What makes 1-suit spider solitaire easier?
One thing, and it changes everything: a run only travels if the cards are the same suit, and in the one-suit game they always are. A descending 9-8-7-6 in the four-suit game might be four different suits, in which case only the 6 moves and the rest are frozen where they sit. In the one-suit game that same 9-8-7-6 lifts as a single unit and lands anywhere a 10 is showing. You never build a stack you cannot take apart again.
What is left is the part of spider that is actually a puzzle: managing ten columns, emptying one, and deciding when to spend a stock deal. The stock is the real constraint — five deals of ten cards, and you may not deal at all while any column is empty.
How often does 1-suit spider solitaire come out?
Considerably more often than the two- and four-suit games, and for most players more often than not. Published solver work on spider is much thinner than on Klondike or FreeCell, so treat any exact percentage you see quoted with suspicion — including ours. What is not in doubt is the ordering: one suit is the easiest of the three by a wide margin, and four suits is the hardest widely played solitaire there is.
What should you do first in a one-suit game?
- Turn face-down cards over before anything else. Ten of the fifty-four dealt cards are face up; the other forty-four are information you do not have yet.
- Work toward an empty column, then guard it. An empty column is the only place a King can go, and it is the only free workspace you have.
- Do not deal from the stock while you still have useful moves. Every deal drops ten cards on top of your tidy sequences and buries them.
- Prefer the move that leaves the shortest column shorter. Depth is what kills a spider deal — a card under six others is a card you may never reach.
When should you move up to two suits?
As soon as one suit stops feeling like a decision. Two-suit spider adds exactly one rule — mixed-suit stacks freeze — and that single rule is where the whole game lives. Most players who clear one suit routinely find two suits humbling for a week and then genuinely interesting. Four suits after that, if you want the hard one.
Spider Solitaire — 1 Suit questions people ask
- How many cards are in 1-suit spider solitaire?
- 104 — eight copies of the thirteen spades. It is a two-deck game like every other spider variant; the two decks have simply had all their other suits replaced with spades.
- Can you always win spider solitaire 1 suit?
- No. Most deals come out with careful play, but the stock deal is blind and can bury a column past saving. Unlimited undo means you can back out of a mistake, which is not the same as the deal being winnable from the start.
- Why will the game not let me deal from the stock?
- Because a column is empty. It is a standard spider rule in every version of the game: you may not deal while any column is empty, which stops you parking an empty column indefinitely and dealing around it.
- Is 1-suit spider solitaire the same as regular solitaire?
- No. Regular solitaire is Klondike — one deck, seven columns, four foundations, and you build down in alternating colours. Spider is two decks, ten columns, no foundations to build on, and you win by assembling complete King-to-Ace runs inside the tableau itself.
The full rules of spider solitaire
This page is one rule set. The complete rules, with worked examples and the questions beginners actually ask, are on how to play spider solitaire, and every rule set is switchable on the main spider solitaire page.